Information and content distribution systems are used to provide information and content to a plurality of end systems. For example, in the advertising realm, providing in-store retail media content is becoming the most popular advertising medium in use today, with broadcast distribution being its primary means of content presentation. That is, in recent years retailers and the managers of public spaces have brought in video display systems for advertising use. In such systems, content is distributed by a server and received at receivers such as a respective set-top-box for each display or group of displays and associated speakers. Retailers use the displays and speakers to present their current offerings or sale information, while the public spaces sell time on the video displays and speakers to advertisers either national or local, knowing that large numbers of consumers will see the presentation.
However, as will be appreciated by those providing the advertising (i.e., either the content distribution environment or the product/service provider), the most effective advertising is preferably targeted to the particular viewer, for example, such that a presentation for a specific viewer is selected in such a way that the information about the offered product is a good match for the viewer(s) near the screen.
In order to implement this type of targeted deployment of advertising media, it is critical to uniquely identify the people near the screen or display device in the content distribution environment. One such unique means to specifically identify a potential or existing customer is to detect the MAC address of their phone or mobile device and use that as a unique index or key to look up demographic or identity information about the person who owns the phone. Once this information is known, the advertising media can be selected and displayed accordingly.